The Christian movie follows a template, a simple pattern. From a writing standpoint, the writer's aim is to build toward an evangelistic encounter which will result in a conversion and a dramatically changed life. To get there, he follows the formula for a Christian movie:
1. The story line must be dramatic, emotional.
2. The story line, to be emotional, must contain tear-jerking scenes and a dramatic event, such as a sudden death, a life-threatening diagnosis, a disfiguring accident, a pending divorce, etc.
3. This dramatic event leads to an evangelistic encounter.
4. The evangelistic encounter leads to a conversion
5. Dramatic, wonderful results follow the conversion.
6. The person converted and those around him lead a life of happily ever after
PROBLEMS WITH THE PATTERN: CONVERSION
In a movie, how does the screen convey a conversion to Christ? Do the lights burn brighter? Does the convert burst into song? Is there a hop, skip, and a jump in his step? Does the sun come out from the clouds? Forgive my hyperbole, but, bear with me, I'm trying to make a point. How DO you portray a conversion to Christ in a Christian film or any movie?
This is an inherent problem for a Christian movie because a conversion to Christ is passive, not active, that is, trusting Christ alone through faith alone is as one receiving a gift (John 1:12). A conversion takes place on the inside when a person's faith meets the right object, Jesus Christ. The problem is that a movie, to be interesting, must have action, drama, emotion, something the audience can see and feel. But a conversion, by its very nature is a passive placing of one's trust in Christ.
Therefore, to remedy this problem, the Christian movie has to jazz up the conversion by showing dramatic, emotional, energetic sometimes tear-jerking results. This complicates things because a conversion to Christ may not produce any results from which you'd make a movie. Has the conversion of a child ever been made into a film? Why not? The results aren't dramatic. Has someone made a Christian movie about a dedicated child evangelism worker? They are some of the most modest, humble, dedicated believers I've ever met, yet who's made a movie about them?
The movie therefore creates a false impression--all conversions, to be "real," must be like Paul's on the road to Damascus. Whereas the circumstances and results of his conversion were dramatic, thousands aren't, yet all who trust Christ apart from a blinding light are just as saved as Paul.
PROBLEMS WITH THE PATTERN: 100%
The formula demands conversion. The hero must convert, thus giving the idea that if you talk to someone about Christ and he doesn't trust Him, you must not be doing it right, certainly not like the fellow in the movie did it; he does it right. The witnessing Christian in the movies never stumbles over his words, is articulate, always knows the right thing to say, and has an answer for every problem.
But the reality is that the return on our evangelistic encounters aren't100%; the truth is that we'll sometimes lose friends and people in our own churches will pick up rocks, metaphorically speaking, to stone us. Paul said that he bore the scars the grace message may bring.
PROBLEMS WITH THE PATTERN: TEARS
The template demands that the main character must be going through a crisis which will be the trigger to the conversion. This is a plot device to keep the audience interested. But the truth is that people trust Christ without being disfigured, getting a bad diagnosis, losing a loved one, or standing on the brink of divorce. This plot device re-enforces the time-worn argument against Christianity that it's a crutch for weak, emotional people. The reality is that some, after getting a bad diagnosis, don't want to hear anything about Christ and immediately change the subject. Let's not be naive.Some on the brink of divorce may be angry and don't want to hear anything from us.
The truth is that millions have trusted Christ by reading John 3 (George Whitefield), in the middle of a sermon, while talking to a friend, and one person I know trusted Christ while studying for a sermon! There was no dramatic, tearful, emotional, crisis event that led them to place their faith in Christ, their conversion was crisis-free. We could point to the woman at the well in John 4 and the Ethiopian official riding in his chariot, reading Isaiah 53, and then talking to someone he'd never met (Acts 8).
One youth pastor pointed out a problem with a-crisis-is-needed-portrayal-before-conversion-when his youth group started to pray for bad things to happen to their friends so they would "come to Christ."
In this same category of trials and tears, the writer is compelled to make the dialogue periodically dramatic. In "Fireproof," one character tells another, "You gotta beg God to teach you to be a good husband." The story line is that God wants the protagonist to become a good husband, that it's His will. But then the wiser character tells the hero, "You gotta beg God to teach you . . ."? That's dramatic.
Wait. What? Such dialogue is dramatic, but misleading and impugns the character of God. It implies, "It's God's will all right, but unless you beg Him, it's not "gonna" happen. This type of dialogue destroys grace--"If you want it, beg."
PROBLEMS WITH THE PATTERN: THE HAPPILY EVER AFTER
In the movie, "Fireproof," a Christian talking to another person about his own life conveyed the impression of a "happy-ever-after-life" by repeating "It [the problem, the difficulty] was before I gave my life to the Lord." In the conversation, he repeated the sentence three times when discussing certain difficulties he'd faced in the past. This repetition implied to the audience, "After I gave my life to the Lord," "After I gave my life to the Lord," "After I gave my life to God," I've had no more struggles.
This scripting implies that once a person "Gives their life to the Lord," they live on a Beautyrest mattress. Yet, "after he gave his life to the Lord," David lied, murdered, and committed adultery, and before him, Saul, "after he gave his life to the Lord," committed suicide. Before Jonah "gave his life to the Lord," he hated the Assyrians and "after he gave his life to the Lord," he still hated them.
In the New Testament, after Demas "gave his life to the Lord," he fell in love with the world and abandoned Paul. Hymenaeus and Philetus, after "giving their lives to the Lord," strayed from the truth. Paul tells Timothy of those believers who did not keep the faith, but rejected it. Since all epistles are addressed to believers, we learn from Peter that it's possible for a Christian to suffer as a "murderer, or thief, or evildoer, or a troublesome meddler."
By following the pattern, the Christian movie, to say it euphemistically, gives an unrealistic and unlivable picture of life.
C. S. Lewis called this unrealistic pattern, "egoistic castle-building," and by that he meant taking a person and placing him into the most admirable character in such a way that he desires the reality that the character enjoys. He so wants it to be true that he overlooks reality.
In egoistic castle building, the Christian college freshman defeats his atheist professor, God saves the hero's marriage, and televangelist is so powerful, he's framed and hunted down by the government. The movie-goer sees himself in the hero of those movies. This is nothing more than wishful thinking; he's being manipulated by the script he desperately wants to be true in his own life. He's built his "egoistic castle," as Lewis would say. Get real.
To be continued.
_______________________________________________________________________________
WITHOUT COST
Friday, April 3, 2015
Friday, March 27, 2015
CINDERELLA ALWAYS FINDS HER FELLA II
John and Barbara Bookman have been married for 9 years, but their marriage is in trouble, serious trouble. If you listen to Barbara, John doesn't care any more. He doesn't pay her the attention he did 8 years ago when everything was hearts and flowers, prose and poems. Back then, John was a romantic who would compose the most romantic of letters and lavish the most lavish of gifts. That was John Bookman back in the day: thoughtful, considerate to the core.
Something else was bothering Barbara: John had just flat out quit going to church and she was beginning to doubt his salvation. He hadn't read a Christian book on marriage in years, if ever. As best as Barbara could remember, John hadn't watched a televangelist his entire life. "Maybe John isn't a Christian," she concluded.
From Barbara's point of view, things were getting worse. That's when she got an idea. The idea came to her while watching Pastor Goodpasture's weekly TV program, "Heaven: Have It Now." During Pastor Goodpasture's sermon, "Keep Positive, Pollyanna," he mentioned a new movie called, "Fireproof."
He explained that it was the story about the deteriorating marriage of a fireman and his wife, and how Christ saved the marriage, making it "fireproof." The photogenic Pastor Goodpasture said that any marriage could be saved if the husband would only put into practice the techniques shown in the film. (Pastor Goodpasture knew all this because he'd seen the movie at a special screening for all "community leaders" free of charge.)
Many times,while watching "Heaven: You Can Have It Now," Barbara had thought, "If only my husband could be like Pastor Goodpasture."
This was the answer to Barbara's prayer, but her problem was getting John into the theater because he didn't like crowds, thought the ticket prices were outrageous, believed the concession stand to be a rip-off, and didn't like fighting his way through the traffic on the Interstate to get to the CinePlex 16.
But Barbara was determined. If she could just get John into the theater, she knew the movie would do the rest. The next day she told John that there was a new movie she knew he would like. "It's about firefighters and I've heard it's really good," she told John.
She knew John had liked "The Towering Inferno," which they saw on Netflix and it was about a fire and firemen. After a bit of nagging, John agreed, since it was his pattern to cave into Barbara's Harpy-like emotional insistence, and, if it's like "The Towering Inferno" or even "Frequency," it might be pretty good, John decided. But he did wonder why Barbara became so emotional about going to a movie.
The night came and John and Barbara went to the theater. It wasn't too long into the plot that John realized he'd been had. He sat and watched as several times in the story there was an explicit evangelism encounter forced into the story that made him squirm.
Everyone in the theater knew those "turn or burn" parts of the story were aimed at non-Christians. In this way, the script shoehorned the evangelistic encounter into the plot. John felt like he was sitting through an altar call as one character in the movie explained to another how he/she is a sinner and needed Jesus.
So the audience will get the point, an evangelistic encounter invaded the movie three times. John cringed every time, feeling like he was watching an intervention. It was like the time he was watching the Academy Awards when several of the Oscar winners like Michael Moore abused the audience to give unannounced liberal political speeches no one asked for and no one attended or watched the function to hear.
Besides that, John noticed something about the story line:
1. The wife has a disobedient husband who doesn't follow her leadership.
2. The wife gripes, but her husband still won't submit to her.
3. The wife never repents of her sins: she's never rebuked for lining up the doctor for either an affair or as a husband, she's never admonished for violating I Cor. 7:3-5. The husband confronts the doctor, but never his own wife.
4. Wife threatens divorce.
5. The threat of divorce is the catalyst to help God change her husband.
6. Wife delivers the divorce papers.
7. Husband grovels and completely surrenders to her. (He grovels and weeps at her feet, begs for her forgiveness; purchases her love by giving up $25,000 he had been saving for a boat and instead buys used medical furniture for his mother-in-law. Now his wife realizes he has become a “beautiful” man. And a wife is supposed to respect a Casper Milquetoast like that?)
8. Wife knows that God has transformed her husband.*
John Bookman left the theater, not feeling guilty as Barbara had hoped, but angry. He'd been ambushed. As the final credits were rolling, John stormed out, walking in silence by Barbara, wondering how many other ambushed husbands were in the theater that night. He felt sorry for them and angry about the whole ruined evening.
AN INHERENT PROBLEM WITH CHRISTIAN MOVIES
What is it with Christian movies? What happens is an inherent dishonesty, a lack of integrity, the old "bait and switch." A Christian movie inherently contains the bait and switch ploy. As Andrew Barber, an English teacher at Stony Brook School sees the problem, all Christian films say, "Come see how good we Christians are at our movie-making craft, and, guess what?--While we have you in the theater, we'd like to convert you."
"Welcome to my parlor " said the spider to the fly. Ambushed!
No one likes to be the victim of a bait and switch. A friend of mine, an elder in the church, invited everybody in our circle but me to a meeting to learn how to lower their taxes. At least, that's what he said the meeting was about. I didn't go because I wasn't invited, but I learned my absence was a good thing--the bait and switch ploy was in full swing that evening. It wasn't really a meeting on how to lower your taxes, it was a meeting to recruit people into Amway.
BUT IF JUST ONE
Some will say, "But if just one person is saved, isn't that a good thing?" If you say that, you've just proved my point--that the evangelism encounters are aimed at the audience and not a real part of the story. Do we really want to go there, to the-end-justifies-any-method of evangelistic encounter? If we open that Pandora's Box, who knows where we'll end up? I might preach a miserable sermon (or two or three, for that matter--that's real life) and someone is saved. Does that justify my making every sermon more miserable, cringe-worthy, and embarrassing than the last? "The idea that one conversion validates even the worst methods can be used to validate all sorts of evils." (Andrew Barber)
In "Fireproof" Cinderella got her fella, while flirting with a married doctor, getting entangled in an emotional affair free from confrontation and repentance, while violating I Cor. 7, and threatening her husband, but, as in every Christian movie, she lived happily ever after. The movie set it up to where the fault was all his, even for her flirtations and emotional affair (!).
But there's more.
To be continued................
_______________________________________________________________________________
*From Dalrock
________________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, the author of Truthspeak and his new book, The Gospel of Grace and Truth: A Theology of Grace from the Gospel of John," both available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing to Dr. Halsey at michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."
Comments may be addressed to michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net.
If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.
Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM at the above address. You'll be glad you did.
Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:
notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org
Also:
Biblical Ministries, Inc.
C/O Dr. Richard Grubbs
P. O. Box 64582
Lubbock, TX 79464-4582
Something else was bothering Barbara: John had just flat out quit going to church and she was beginning to doubt his salvation. He hadn't read a Christian book on marriage in years, if ever. As best as Barbara could remember, John hadn't watched a televangelist his entire life. "Maybe John isn't a Christian," she concluded.
From Barbara's point of view, things were getting worse. That's when she got an idea. The idea came to her while watching Pastor Goodpasture's weekly TV program, "Heaven: Have It Now." During Pastor Goodpasture's sermon, "Keep Positive, Pollyanna," he mentioned a new movie called, "Fireproof."
He explained that it was the story about the deteriorating marriage of a fireman and his wife, and how Christ saved the marriage, making it "fireproof." The photogenic Pastor Goodpasture said that any marriage could be saved if the husband would only put into practice the techniques shown in the film. (Pastor Goodpasture knew all this because he'd seen the movie at a special screening for all "community leaders" free of charge.)
Many times,while watching "Heaven: You Can Have It Now," Barbara had thought, "If only my husband could be like Pastor Goodpasture."
This was the answer to Barbara's prayer, but her problem was getting John into the theater because he didn't like crowds, thought the ticket prices were outrageous, believed the concession stand to be a rip-off, and didn't like fighting his way through the traffic on the Interstate to get to the CinePlex 16.
But Barbara was determined. If she could just get John into the theater, she knew the movie would do the rest. The next day she told John that there was a new movie she knew he would like. "It's about firefighters and I've heard it's really good," she told John.
She knew John had liked "The Towering Inferno," which they saw on Netflix and it was about a fire and firemen. After a bit of nagging, John agreed, since it was his pattern to cave into Barbara's Harpy-like emotional insistence, and, if it's like "The Towering Inferno" or even "Frequency," it might be pretty good, John decided. But he did wonder why Barbara became so emotional about going to a movie.
The night came and John and Barbara went to the theater. It wasn't too long into the plot that John realized he'd been had. He sat and watched as several times in the story there was an explicit evangelism encounter forced into the story that made him squirm.
Everyone in the theater knew those "turn or burn" parts of the story were aimed at non-Christians. In this way, the script shoehorned the evangelistic encounter into the plot. John felt like he was sitting through an altar call as one character in the movie explained to another how he/she is a sinner and needed Jesus.
So the audience will get the point, an evangelistic encounter invaded the movie three times. John cringed every time, feeling like he was watching an intervention. It was like the time he was watching the Academy Awards when several of the Oscar winners like Michael Moore abused the audience to give unannounced liberal political speeches no one asked for and no one attended or watched the function to hear.
Besides that, John noticed something about the story line:
1. The wife has a disobedient husband who doesn't follow her leadership.
2. The wife gripes, but her husband still won't submit to her.
3. The wife never repents of her sins: she's never rebuked for lining up the doctor for either an affair or as a husband, she's never admonished for violating I Cor. 7:3-5. The husband confronts the doctor, but never his own wife.
4. Wife threatens divorce.
5. The threat of divorce is the catalyst to help God change her husband.
6. Wife delivers the divorce papers.
7. Husband grovels and completely surrenders to her. (He grovels and weeps at her feet, begs for her forgiveness; purchases her love by giving up $25,000 he had been saving for a boat and instead buys used medical furniture for his mother-in-law. Now his wife realizes he has become a “beautiful” man. And a wife is supposed to respect a Casper Milquetoast like that?)
8. Wife knows that God has transformed her husband.*
John Bookman left the theater, not feeling guilty as Barbara had hoped, but angry. He'd been ambushed. As the final credits were rolling, John stormed out, walking in silence by Barbara, wondering how many other ambushed husbands were in the theater that night. He felt sorry for them and angry about the whole ruined evening.
AN INHERENT PROBLEM WITH CHRISTIAN MOVIES
What is it with Christian movies? What happens is an inherent dishonesty, a lack of integrity, the old "bait and switch." A Christian movie inherently contains the bait and switch ploy. As Andrew Barber, an English teacher at Stony Brook School sees the problem, all Christian films say, "Come see how good we Christians are at our movie-making craft, and, guess what?--While we have you in the theater, we'd like to convert you."
"Welcome to my parlor " said the spider to the fly. Ambushed!
No one likes to be the victim of a bait and switch. A friend of mine, an elder in the church, invited everybody in our circle but me to a meeting to learn how to lower their taxes. At least, that's what he said the meeting was about. I didn't go because I wasn't invited, but I learned my absence was a good thing--the bait and switch ploy was in full swing that evening. It wasn't really a meeting on how to lower your taxes, it was a meeting to recruit people into Amway.
BUT IF JUST ONE
Some will say, "But if just one person is saved, isn't that a good thing?" If you say that, you've just proved my point--that the evangelism encounters are aimed at the audience and not a real part of the story. Do we really want to go there, to the-end-justifies-any-method of evangelistic encounter? If we open that Pandora's Box, who knows where we'll end up? I might preach a miserable sermon (or two or three, for that matter--that's real life) and someone is saved. Does that justify my making every sermon more miserable, cringe-worthy, and embarrassing than the last? "The idea that one conversion validates even the worst methods can be used to validate all sorts of evils." (Andrew Barber)
In "Fireproof" Cinderella got her fella, while flirting with a married doctor, getting entangled in an emotional affair free from confrontation and repentance, while violating I Cor. 7, and threatening her husband, but, as in every Christian movie, she lived happily ever after. The movie set it up to where the fault was all his, even for her flirtations and emotional affair (!).
But there's more.
To be continued................
_______________________________________________________________________________
*From Dalrock
________________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, the author of Truthspeak and his new book, The Gospel of Grace and Truth: A Theology of Grace from the Gospel of John," both available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing to Dr. Halsey at michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."
Comments may be addressed to michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net.
If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.
Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM at the above address. You'll be glad you did.
Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:
notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org
Also:
Biblical Ministries, Inc.
C/O Dr. Richard Grubbs
P. O. Box 64582
Lubbock, TX 79464-4582
Friday, March 20, 2015
CINDERELLA ALWAYS FINDS HER FELLA
We may as well be honest: Christian fiction and Christian movies are boring, predictable, preachy, simplistic, and cliche-ridden. I'll bet that when you bought your ticket to see "Fireproof," you knew the ending. It was like seeing the sermon title in the bulletin last Sunday; once you saw it, you knew the end from the beginning of the sermon. (Sermon titles normally give the sermon away.) The only suspense was in how long it would take the pastor to finish.
The predictable element is that the main character will become a Christian. The simplistic element is that, once he does, all, everything in his life (especially his marriage) will go well, very well, even exceptional. The rest of his life will be a non-stop happily ever after. Once he's "born again," "walks the aisle," "prays," "invites Jesus into his heart," and "makes God his co-pilot" (the cliches), his struggles are over, washed away like pollen in a spring shower.
The preachy, stilted dialogue makes Pollyanna look a curmudgeon. When a Christian enters the drama, he's all wise, all knowing, kind, and a benevolent sweet saint. He speaks in Saccharine; his tones are stained glass; he's conquered all his problems and hasn't battled them since his one-and-done victory. He never shows a flash of anger, never sins or thinks a bad thought. The unbeliever to whom he witnesses is always "gloriously saved" (another cliche) by the end of the movie.
THOSE ORANGE BOOKS
Back in the day, they stocked my church library with biographies for kids about famous Christians. They had orange covers and one other thing--in the boyhood of the famous Christian, the book never related anything wrong, any personal difficulty, any character flaw, any struggle the young ward may have had. No. He was perfect all the time, every time.
I know why I quit reading them; they weren't real life. The "biography" was fiction disguised as non-fiction. The reader would almost expect the young lad to encounter water and walk on it. Our hero overcame everything. I was too young to know what was wrong with the "orange book biographies," but after a while I lost interest. They bored me, but I didn't know why.
CINDERELLA FINDS HER FELLA
I'm told that in Christian fiction for young females, the typical heroine pines and prays for a mate and when finally she stands at the altar of holy matrimony, her life is perfect; marriage has solved all her problems. Our Christian Cinderella lives happily ever after. The glass slipper has done its work. It's all so formulaic, so predictable, so cliche, and so boring.
BUT IT GOES DEEPER THAN THAT
There's a deeper problem with all of this Christian fiction--the greatest fiction of them all. It promotes the mindset that if we can just get 51% of the American people to see "The Passion of the Christ," we can save the nation. If we can just get people to see "Fireproof," we could save all marriages. If we could just get 51% of the people into the stadium to hear Billy Graham, we'd deliver America from its moral cesspool. If we can only get 51% of American men to attend Promise Keepers or a Bill Gothard Seminar or the latest fad conclave, all will be well. If we can just get that Christian candidate into the White House for four years, we'll "take this country back," we'll "capture America for Christ." (More cliches)
THE POINT WE'VE COME TO
We want to show the world that we've got our own stuff too, just like the world. We've got our own actors, our own movies, our own books, our own newscasts, our own magazines, our own Yellow Pages, our own art, our own jewelry, our own plumbers, our own rap music. We're trying to show the world that our stuff is as good as their stuff.
And therein is the problem. Fads blow through the Christian world, just as they do the world. These fads constantly let us down because none of those things fulfill the promises they make to us. We leave the seminars, the theaters, we put down the books and then go out to live our lives in a fallen world, a world, which, because of the fall, just won't "work." Yet the movies and the books make it all sound so simple.
And therein lies the biggest problem of them all--all this Christian stuff becomes our latest Baal that replaces Christ with methods, techniques, and schemes.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, the author of Truthspeak and his new book, The Gospel of Grace and Truth: A Theology of Grace from the Gospel of John," both available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing to Dr. Halsey at michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."
Comments may be addressed to michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net.
If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.
Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM at the above address. You'll be glad you did.
Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:
notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org
Also:
Biblical Ministries, Inc.
C/O Dr. Richard Grubbs
P. O. Box 64582
Lubbock, TX 79464-4582
The predictable element is that the main character will become a Christian. The simplistic element is that, once he does, all, everything in his life (especially his marriage) will go well, very well, even exceptional. The rest of his life will be a non-stop happily ever after. Once he's "born again," "walks the aisle," "prays," "invites Jesus into his heart," and "makes God his co-pilot" (the cliches), his struggles are over, washed away like pollen in a spring shower.
The preachy, stilted dialogue makes Pollyanna look a curmudgeon. When a Christian enters the drama, he's all wise, all knowing, kind, and a benevolent sweet saint. He speaks in Saccharine; his tones are stained glass; he's conquered all his problems and hasn't battled them since his one-and-done victory. He never shows a flash of anger, never sins or thinks a bad thought. The unbeliever to whom he witnesses is always "gloriously saved" (another cliche) by the end of the movie.
THOSE ORANGE BOOKS
Back in the day, they stocked my church library with biographies for kids about famous Christians. They had orange covers and one other thing--in the boyhood of the famous Christian, the book never related anything wrong, any personal difficulty, any character flaw, any struggle the young ward may have had. No. He was perfect all the time, every time.
I know why I quit reading them; they weren't real life. The "biography" was fiction disguised as non-fiction. The reader would almost expect the young lad to encounter water and walk on it. Our hero overcame everything. I was too young to know what was wrong with the "orange book biographies," but after a while I lost interest. They bored me, but I didn't know why.
CINDERELLA FINDS HER FELLA
I'm told that in Christian fiction for young females, the typical heroine pines and prays for a mate and when finally she stands at the altar of holy matrimony, her life is perfect; marriage has solved all her problems. Our Christian Cinderella lives happily ever after. The glass slipper has done its work. It's all so formulaic, so predictable, so cliche, and so boring.
BUT IT GOES DEEPER THAN THAT
There's a deeper problem with all of this Christian fiction--the greatest fiction of them all. It promotes the mindset that if we can just get 51% of the American people to see "The Passion of the Christ," we can save the nation. If we can just get people to see "Fireproof," we could save all marriages. If we could just get 51% of the people into the stadium to hear Billy Graham, we'd deliver America from its moral cesspool. If we can only get 51% of American men to attend Promise Keepers or a Bill Gothard Seminar or the latest fad conclave, all will be well. If we can just get that Christian candidate into the White House for four years, we'll "take this country back," we'll "capture America for Christ." (More cliches)
THE POINT WE'VE COME TO
We want to show the world that we've got our own stuff too, just like the world. We've got our own actors, our own movies, our own books, our own newscasts, our own magazines, our own Yellow Pages, our own art, our own jewelry, our own plumbers, our own rap music. We're trying to show the world that our stuff is as good as their stuff.
And therein is the problem. Fads blow through the Christian world, just as they do the world. These fads constantly let us down because none of those things fulfill the promises they make to us. We leave the seminars, the theaters, we put down the books and then go out to live our lives in a fallen world, a world, which, because of the fall, just won't "work." Yet the movies and the books make it all sound so simple.
And therein lies the biggest problem of them all--all this Christian stuff becomes our latest Baal that replaces Christ with methods, techniques, and schemes.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, the author of Truthspeak and his new book, The Gospel of Grace and Truth: A Theology of Grace from the Gospel of John," both available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing to Dr. Halsey at michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."
Comments may be addressed to michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net.
If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.
Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM at the above address. You'll be glad you did.
Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:
notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org
Also:
Biblical Ministries, Inc.
C/O Dr. Richard Grubbs
P. O. Box 64582
Lubbock, TX 79464-4582
Thursday, March 12, 2015
DID YOU SUPPORT CHICK-FIL-A?
Let's take a short examination. Label each of the following as either "Fact" or "Opinion."
— Copying homework assignments is wrong.
Let's examine this. Some of our beliefs are true, some aren't. It's a fact that Lincoln was president during the War Between the States and it's also my opinion that Lincoln was president during the War Between the States. It was once a "fact" that the world was flat, but that "fact" wasn't true. Some of our beliefs are true whether there is evidence for them or not. (The Bible-believer would say that all beliefs founded on Scripture are true, and the reasoning for that belief is circular: because they are founded on the Bible. That's all right because the reasoning of the non-Christian is circular too.)
— Copying homework assignments is wrong.
— Cursing in school is inappropriate behavior.
— All men are created equal.
— It is worth sacrificing some personal liberties to protect our country from terrorism.
— It is wrong for people under the age of 21 to drink alcohol.
— Vegetarians are healthier than people who eat meat.
— Drug dealers belong in prison.
If you answered all of the above as "Fact," don't congratulate yourself; you made an "F." Wait. What? Yes, that's right, you just made an "F." And since you failed the test, it shows just how much you're out of touch with what's going on all around you.
I DON'T GET IT
To help us understand what's going on, let's ask a question: Are our universities turning out hundreds of thousands of moral relativists, that is, people who don't believe that we can classify something as "Right" or "Wrong" for everybody, but only for ourselves? If you answered, "Yes," to that question, it just shows again how out of touch you are. How so? Because the test you just took is a test for students in elementary school. Wait. What?
This was the discovery of philosopher Dr. Justin P. McBrayer whose son is in the second grade and is "learning" that there are such things as "Facts" and there are such things as "Opinions." Dr. McBrayer went to the open house at his son's school where he saw something disturbing. On the bulletin board were two signs. One sign said, "Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven." The other sign said, "Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes."
Little McBrayer is learning that "Facts" are things you can prove, "Opinions" are thing you can't. He's learning that every value or moral claim is merely an opinion. He's learning that the moral statements on the quiz you just took are all "Opinions," not "Facts."
This curriculum isn't a college curriculum; it starts in kindergarten and continues through all twelve grades. Therefore, hundreds of thousands of kids are going to come out through-going, certified, card carrying relativists before they get to college whether they enroll in college or not. No wonder Lenin, the leader of the Communist Revolution in Russia, said, "Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted."
Hitler agreed with fellow-monster Lenin. When he wrote "Mein Kampf" while serving out a prison sentence at Landsberg, Hitler said, “Whoever has the youth has the future”.
Let's examine this. Some of our beliefs are true, some aren't. It's a fact that Lincoln was president during the War Between the States and it's also my opinion that Lincoln was president during the War Between the States. It was once a "fact" that the world was flat, but that "fact" wasn't true. Some of our beliefs are true whether there is evidence for them or not. (The Bible-believer would say that all beliefs founded on Scripture are true, and the reasoning for that belief is circular: because they are founded on the Bible. That's all right because the reasoning of the non-Christian is circular too.)
THE OUTCOME?
One outcome of all this is that you can't be angered that someone murdered cartoonists in France, because it's just your opinion that the murder was wrong, it's not a fact that it's wrong. According to this understanding, the Nuremberg Trials were based on the opinion of the Allies that the Germans had committed "crimes against humanity."Another outcome of all this is that order breaks down, respect for authority will vanish, cursing or striking an instructor will cease to be occasional, brawling in the halls like a prisoners rioting will be commonplace. "Anything goes" is the rule of the day.
HERE'S THE RUB
There's a built-in unlivable difficulty in "Fact" vs. "Opinion" indoctrination. Justin McBrayer noticed the inconsistency on the first day of school when his son brought home a list of Student Rights and Responsibilities which informed all parents and students that everyone at school deserved to be treated in a certain way. Let's say one responsibility of the students was that they weren't to bully other students; let's say that all students were responsible to practice academic integrity, that is, no cheating. But wait. What? How can any student have "Rights" and "Responsibilities?" Rights and Responsibilities are just Opinions, not Facts, according to the curriculum.
What this does is to put the students in a dilemma: their curriculum will teach them that cheating is not morally wrong, to think it is, is merely someone's opinion. Then the school turns around and fails or expels those who cheat. Based on the curriculum, a school can't tell a student how to behave, because all moral behavior is (to them) Opinion. We see the problem: you can't live out an unbiblical philosophy without being inconsistent.
What we're seeing is not education; it is indoctrination. All education not founded on the truth is indoctrination.
AND THIS BRINGS US TO CHICK-FIL-A
Did you support Chick-fil-A when they were taking so much flack for daring to oppose same sex marriage? You probably did, and by doing so, you were taking a stand for an absolute morality. Same sex marriage is a sin and therefore wrong. It's a fact and not an opinion. But my point is, do you see that, although it may have made us feel better for taking such a stand, it didn't do any good--the curriculum is still going to churn out millions of youth who would dismiss it all because what you did, in their eyes, is based on your opinion, just an opinion, not fact.
See what the problem is? We're surrounded. The vast majority of our elected officials and the unelected ones too (imbedded bureaucrats that our votes can't touch) are the products of these immoral mills. Those who rule our courts, teach in our classrooms, write copy for our newspapers, and produce scripts for our entertainment come from these institutions of moral chaos.
We've always been surrounded by a- book-of-Judges-society where everyman does what's right in his own eyes. It's the way of the world. We can go back to Judges (1350 BC-1051 BC) and see relativism ingrained in the Israelite society. If that's not moral chaos, I don't know what is.
We could go back to the Greek philosopher Protagoras of Abdera (ca. 485-415 BC) who taught his students, "Man is the measure of all things," to see that this is nothing new, but cheer up, according to the New Testament, it's only going to get worse.
We have to go deep. Just because you bought a chicken sandwich, do you think that's going to do anything, anything at all, to challenge the monolith?
What does Dr. McBrayer suggest?
"The hard work lies not in recognizing that at least some moral claims
are true but in carefully thinking through our evidence for which of the
many competing moral claims is correct. That’s a hard thing to do. But
we can’t sidestep the responsibilities that come with being human just
because it’s hard."
What did a wiser one than McBrayer or you or I say? "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." That is, "A positive response to God and His Word is the starting point of all wisdom," including morality. Our thinking must lead us to the one starting point: the Bible.
Friday, March 6, 2015
AMERICAN IDOL
"On Wednesday, [March 4, 2015] New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York
City schools will begin to observe the Islamic holidays of Eid al-Adha
and Eid al-Fitr. . . .Letitia James, New York’s public advocate, praised New York and
America as a beacon of religious diversity . . . saying, 'America is one nation under all.' " (Blake Neff)
We might ask, "What in the name of common sense does one nation under all" mean, but let's not go into Alice In Wonderland Land. Let's look at something else. New York's public advocate said it, a word we hear too many times. Children hear it; adults hear it. We hear it in regard to everything--education, politics, college admission decisions, jurisprudence, the formation of committees, sports, journalism, law enforcement, and even in regard to awards, awards like those given when millionaires get together to congratulate themselves at the Oscars.
THE WORD IS OUT AND WORSHIPED
Of course, it's the word, "diversity." Diversity is the real American idol. We don't need a TV program to vote on that. In 2009, when President Obama picked Sotomayor as his nominee for the Supreme Court, many commended his choice for the diversity she would bring to the judicial branch. CNN reported that Frank Forrester, a lifelong Republican who switched parties to vote for Obama, said, "Diversity is a valuable attribute for the court to have."
Others stated their worship as well:
"As a woman and Hispanic, she brings to the court a necessary flavor to the court that reflects what America is," said Egberto Willies of Kingwood, Texas.
"She is the new face of America," added Jimmy Deol of Toronto, Canada. "She's a woman, she's of Hispanic descent, and with her moderate liberal views, she reflects the ... diversity and mainstream views of today's America."
Aside from asking, "Since when does what a Canadian think, qualify as important," let's focus on the idol and ask, "Can a nation unite and survive around "diversity?" The ancient Romans knew about and acted upon something America has forgotten--a nation, to be a nation, must unify around a principle that brings them together. In their case, it was emperor worship and that's why they went after the Christians like Paul, John, Peter, and James. The Christians refused to worship the emperor and that was treason. Back then, Rome didn't care who you worshiped, as long as you burned incense to the emperor. That emperor worship united the Empire. That's where we get our word, "religion," which means "to bind together," religion binds people together.
Speaking of diversity, in 40% of the homes in New York City, English is not the language spoken. It is most difficult for a nation to survive where there is no common, official language. The ideal of America as a melting pot where immigrants become Americans is no longer the goal.
ISN'T THE CHURCH TO BE AN EXAMPLE OF DIVERSITY?
Yes, but not the world's definition of diversity. Unfortunately, there are churches which go in for diversity--believe anything you want, you set your own agenda, and discover your own truth is their idea. A Muslim speaks one Sunday and the next Sunday, you're listening to instruction from a Buddhist, and after that, an atheist.
The biblical church has diversity of gifts, but a unity of those gifts exists in mission, function, and purpose (Matt. 28). Paul pointed out that when the church meets and excises the diverse gifts of the group, there is a unity of purpose: edification. Paul talked about the unity of the church as being, "One Lord, one faith, and one baptism" in which Christ is all in all. That's a far cry from the world's idol.
BACK WHEN
American universities used to teach with a mission in mind. Whether they were secular or denominational, their goal was to produce a Christian gentleman-citizen. They looked upon their purpose as being to pass on a valued spiritual and intellectual heritage to the next generations. This is why colleges like Yale had a daily mandatory chapel service for all their students. This is why Noah Porter, the president of Yale wrote in 1869, "American colleges should have a positive religious and Christian character." If a secular college president said that today, the next place you'd see him is in the unemployment line.
Noah Porter believed that no one should use his position at Yale to teach anything hostile to Christianity. He understood that all colleges teach some type of value system or theology, so the only question is, "What theology shall it teach?" The theology of choice in universities today is, "In the beginning were the particles and the particles became complex stuff and the complex stuff imagined God until they discovered evolution."
To produce the Christian gentleman-citizen, the universities were united around a core curriculum with chapel services. We call that curriculum a classical education. A classical education was, in and of itself, a statement of what the university believed to be important and believed to be the truth. It demonstrated what the university held to be aesthetic, intellectual, and moral.
Back then, an education consisted of mathematics to give logic, the Greek and Roman classics to cultivate taste, rhetoric to give speech, and Christianity to give ethics and ideals. The chapel services were an integral part of this curriculum and prayer was part of the daily chapels. The chapel services were so important that when it was proposed at Yale that the chapel no longer exist, the students protested, saying they needed that time for prayer. The classical curriculum united the students of the universities. This curriculum civilized each succeeding generation.
THEN IT HAPPENED
Then it happened. Forces came into being which tore classical education apart. The destruction came because of something we consider both normal and essential today--the elective system. The elective system carries its own statement: the university will no longer decide what subjects are important, you decide and you take the courses we'll provide for your choosing. To look at a college catalog today is to be confronted with hundreds of courses in scores of specialized fields.
Back in 1868-1888, James McCosh, the president of Princeton University noted that because of the elective system, students were asking troubling questions about the meaning of life and whether life was worth living. Only Christianity could have answered those questions for them, but the classical curriculum was fading.
There were those educators back then who saw where the elective system with its emphasis of science and progress apart from a classical Christian education would lead--it would cause the destruction of cohesion on campus and the loss of the civilizing mission of the universities. And that's where we are today. They foresaw that the elective system would bring educational anarchy to the campus and that it would mean that the adults, the educators, would not be able to tell the youth what was important. Many educators back then feared that the vacuum left by a classical education would be filled by materialism. (They were right; just this week I heard a young adult, as he was leaving the building, say good-bye to his friend telling him, "I'm off for the most important part of the day, to make money. That's my goal, my life goal.")
A former professor of mine remarked that when he asked his college class, "What is the purpose of life," the resounding answer was, "To have fun." No student in the days of Porter and McCosh would have even considered such an moronic answer.
THE HARVEST
The harvest came in the 1960's when the universities allowed the students to set their own agendas for what education should be. Because of the drift from classical education, we don't have any definition of what an educated person is and what the truth is. The colleges have abandoned their moral authority to tell us. You go find your own truth and purpose, and I'll find mine.
Lost in the elective system were the teachers who could lead the students to the wisdom of the past and help them stand on the shoulders of the sages of the ages. The elective system means that there is no wisdom from the past to transmit, that there is no ultimate truth to pass on to anyone, an idea contrary to Deuteronomy 6:6-7 No truth means that there's no basis to stand against evil; in order to do that, a person must know the truth, what's right.
YOU MIGHT BE ASKING
You might be asking, "What's the elective system brought to education?" That's a good question. To answer it, here's a sampling, only a partial one, of elective courses a student may take at various universities in America:
1. The History of Maple Syrup
2. How to Win a Beauty Pageant: Race, Gender, Culture, and U. S. National Identity
3. Elvish: The Language of "Lord of the Rings"
4. The Unbearable Whiteness of Barbie
5. The Science of Superheroes
6. The Art of Walking (the student receives credit for walking to class)
7. Learning from YouTube
Former Secretary of Education, Bill Bennett summed it up: "The Color Purple" has replaced Shakespeare as being taught in more English departments in the 1990's than all of Shakespeare's plays combined."
SO WHAT TO DO?
A Christian classical education is in the hands of Christian parents and grandparents, not in the hands of the professionals. A good start would be reading the classics to children, including the Bible, and history by the carloads. What are the classics? Bill Bennett tells us: "The [classics] can be described as the best that has been said, thought, written, and otherwise expressed about the human experience. They tell us how men and women of our and other civilizations have grappled with life's enduring fundamental questions."
Education today has lost its mind and mission.
_________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, the author of Truthspeak and his new book, The Gospel of Grace and Truth: A Theology of Grace from the Gospel of John," both available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing to Dr. Halsey at michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."
Comments may be addressed to michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net.
If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.
Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM at the above address. You'll be glad you did.
Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:
notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org
Also:
Biblical Ministries, Inc.
C/O Dr. Richard Grubbs
P. O. Box 64582
Lubbock, TX 79464-4582
We might ask, "What in the name of common sense does one nation under all" mean, but let's not go into Alice In Wonderland Land. Let's look at something else. New York's public advocate said it, a word we hear too many times. Children hear it; adults hear it. We hear it in regard to everything--education, politics, college admission decisions, jurisprudence, the formation of committees, sports, journalism, law enforcement, and even in regard to awards, awards like those given when millionaires get together to congratulate themselves at the Oscars.
THE WORD IS OUT AND WORSHIPED
Of course, it's the word, "diversity." Diversity is the real American idol. We don't need a TV program to vote on that. In 2009, when President Obama picked Sotomayor as his nominee for the Supreme Court, many commended his choice for the diversity she would bring to the judicial branch. CNN reported that Frank Forrester, a lifelong Republican who switched parties to vote for Obama, said, "Diversity is a valuable attribute for the court to have."
Others stated their worship as well:
"As a woman and Hispanic, she brings to the court a necessary flavor to the court that reflects what America is," said Egberto Willies of Kingwood, Texas.
"She is the new face of America," added Jimmy Deol of Toronto, Canada. "She's a woman, she's of Hispanic descent, and with her moderate liberal views, she reflects the ... diversity and mainstream views of today's America."
Aside from asking, "Since when does what a Canadian think, qualify as important," let's focus on the idol and ask, "Can a nation unite and survive around "diversity?" The ancient Romans knew about and acted upon something America has forgotten--a nation, to be a nation, must unify around a principle that brings them together. In their case, it was emperor worship and that's why they went after the Christians like Paul, John, Peter, and James. The Christians refused to worship the emperor and that was treason. Back then, Rome didn't care who you worshiped, as long as you burned incense to the emperor. That emperor worship united the Empire. That's where we get our word, "religion," which means "to bind together," religion binds people together.
Speaking of diversity, in 40% of the homes in New York City, English is not the language spoken. It is most difficult for a nation to survive where there is no common, official language. The ideal of America as a melting pot where immigrants become Americans is no longer the goal.
ISN'T THE CHURCH TO BE AN EXAMPLE OF DIVERSITY?
Yes, but not the world's definition of diversity. Unfortunately, there are churches which go in for diversity--believe anything you want, you set your own agenda, and discover your own truth is their idea. A Muslim speaks one Sunday and the next Sunday, you're listening to instruction from a Buddhist, and after that, an atheist.
The biblical church has diversity of gifts, but a unity of those gifts exists in mission, function, and purpose (Matt. 28). Paul pointed out that when the church meets and excises the diverse gifts of the group, there is a unity of purpose: edification. Paul talked about the unity of the church as being, "One Lord, one faith, and one baptism" in which Christ is all in all. That's a far cry from the world's idol.
BACK WHEN
American universities used to teach with a mission in mind. Whether they were secular or denominational, their goal was to produce a Christian gentleman-citizen. They looked upon their purpose as being to pass on a valued spiritual and intellectual heritage to the next generations. This is why colleges like Yale had a daily mandatory chapel service for all their students. This is why Noah Porter, the president of Yale wrote in 1869, "American colleges should have a positive religious and Christian character." If a secular college president said that today, the next place you'd see him is in the unemployment line.
Noah Porter believed that no one should use his position at Yale to teach anything hostile to Christianity. He understood that all colleges teach some type of value system or theology, so the only question is, "What theology shall it teach?" The theology of choice in universities today is, "In the beginning were the particles and the particles became complex stuff and the complex stuff imagined God until they discovered evolution."
To produce the Christian gentleman-citizen, the universities were united around a core curriculum with chapel services. We call that curriculum a classical education. A classical education was, in and of itself, a statement of what the university believed to be important and believed to be the truth. It demonstrated what the university held to be aesthetic, intellectual, and moral.
Back then, an education consisted of mathematics to give logic, the Greek and Roman classics to cultivate taste, rhetoric to give speech, and Christianity to give ethics and ideals. The chapel services were an integral part of this curriculum and prayer was part of the daily chapels. The chapel services were so important that when it was proposed at Yale that the chapel no longer exist, the students protested, saying they needed that time for prayer. The classical curriculum united the students of the universities. This curriculum civilized each succeeding generation.
THEN IT HAPPENED
Then it happened. Forces came into being which tore classical education apart. The destruction came because of something we consider both normal and essential today--the elective system. The elective system carries its own statement: the university will no longer decide what subjects are important, you decide and you take the courses we'll provide for your choosing. To look at a college catalog today is to be confronted with hundreds of courses in scores of specialized fields.
Back in 1868-1888, James McCosh, the president of Princeton University noted that because of the elective system, students were asking troubling questions about the meaning of life and whether life was worth living. Only Christianity could have answered those questions for them, but the classical curriculum was fading.
There were those educators back then who saw where the elective system with its emphasis of science and progress apart from a classical Christian education would lead--it would cause the destruction of cohesion on campus and the loss of the civilizing mission of the universities. And that's where we are today. They foresaw that the elective system would bring educational anarchy to the campus and that it would mean that the adults, the educators, would not be able to tell the youth what was important. Many educators back then feared that the vacuum left by a classical education would be filled by materialism. (They were right; just this week I heard a young adult, as he was leaving the building, say good-bye to his friend telling him, "I'm off for the most important part of the day, to make money. That's my goal, my life goal.")
A former professor of mine remarked that when he asked his college class, "What is the purpose of life," the resounding answer was, "To have fun." No student in the days of Porter and McCosh would have even considered such an moronic answer.
THE HARVEST
The harvest came in the 1960's when the universities allowed the students to set their own agendas for what education should be. Because of the drift from classical education, we don't have any definition of what an educated person is and what the truth is. The colleges have abandoned their moral authority to tell us. You go find your own truth and purpose, and I'll find mine.
Lost in the elective system were the teachers who could lead the students to the wisdom of the past and help them stand on the shoulders of the sages of the ages. The elective system means that there is no wisdom from the past to transmit, that there is no ultimate truth to pass on to anyone, an idea contrary to Deuteronomy 6:6-7 No truth means that there's no basis to stand against evil; in order to do that, a person must know the truth, what's right.
YOU MIGHT BE ASKING
You might be asking, "What's the elective system brought to education?" That's a good question. To answer it, here's a sampling, only a partial one, of elective courses a student may take at various universities in America:
1. The History of Maple Syrup
2. How to Win a Beauty Pageant: Race, Gender, Culture, and U. S. National Identity
3. Elvish: The Language of "Lord of the Rings"
4. The Unbearable Whiteness of Barbie
5. The Science of Superheroes
6. The Art of Walking (the student receives credit for walking to class)
7. Learning from YouTube
Former Secretary of Education, Bill Bennett summed it up: "The Color Purple" has replaced Shakespeare as being taught in more English departments in the 1990's than all of Shakespeare's plays combined."
SO WHAT TO DO?
A Christian classical education is in the hands of Christian parents and grandparents, not in the hands of the professionals. A good start would be reading the classics to children, including the Bible, and history by the carloads. What are the classics? Bill Bennett tells us: "The [classics] can be described as the best that has been said, thought, written, and otherwise expressed about the human experience. They tell us how men and women of our and other civilizations have grappled with life's enduring fundamental questions."
Education today has lost its mind and mission.
_________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, the author of Truthspeak and his new book, The Gospel of Grace and Truth: A Theology of Grace from the Gospel of John," both available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing to Dr. Halsey at michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."
Comments may be addressed to michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net.
If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.
Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM at the above address. You'll be glad you did.
Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:
notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org
Also:
Biblical Ministries, Inc.
C/O Dr. Richard Grubbs
P. O. Box 64582
Lubbock, TX 79464-4582
Thursday, February 26, 2015
MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN COWBOYS
The world has its heroes and heroines, holding them up for our admiring gaze. But does the world want us to notice Christians, say, like Bible-believing
missionaries, does the world choose to elevate them in the public eye? I don't think so.
No, missionaries are vilified in both books and movies. James Michener's "Hawaii" portrays the American missionary Abner Hale as rigid, unlikable and pathetic. If you hated Abner Hale, then the director of the movie succeeded in bringing James Michener's character to the screen.
In the book, "At Play in the Fields of the Lord," the author writes about two planes, "which cast their shadows on an Indian tribe in the Amazon jungle. One plane brings the drunken bush pilots Wolfie and Moon, to be hired by a tinpot jungle general to bomb the Indians. The other brings earnest missionaries from North America, to preach their religion to the tribe. In the author's world, both of these aircraft are machines bearing destruction." (Roger Ebert)
Do they make movies in praise of a believer who endures hardship and perseveres against overwhelming odds and does great deeds, paints great works of art, writes beautiful music, builds hospitals, or discovers vaccines to save millions? You know the answer to that question.
Who are those the world system elevates and applauds? Its own.
HELEN KELLER
Let's take Helen Keller. What schoolboy was not raised on the heroism of Helen Keller who overcame the debilitating effects of such terrible disabilities? Why, the Motion Picture Academy made a film about her life and awarded its leading actresses the coveted Oscar. Before that, the movie was a Broadway play. People loved both the movie and the play.
But, could we be curious for a moment and ask, "Why, of all the people who've overcome severe disabilities, and she did,why did the world choose Helen Keller as the one to chisel onto the Mount Rushmore of our minds? Maybe the following had something to do with it.
WHO WAS HELEN KELLER?
"There is no getting around this, but Helen Keller was a communist or at the very least a hardcore socialist. She spoke out against nuclear bombs, poverty, and capitalism—very actively and very frequently. She published dozens of articles on these matters, and passionately spoke out in public against anything that bothered her morally, politically speaking. So much so that she was on an FBI list of prominent people they needed to keep an eye on." So wrote Larry Knipfing in May, 2012.
She thought the Russian Revolution of 1917, which brought the communists to power was a good thing for Russia and the world. Workers Power, a revolutionary communist organization founded in Britain in 1976 is high on its praise of Helen Keller. In an article dated February 26, 2015, Workers Power said:
"When the First World war came to an end and the workers took power in Russia, Keller backed the revolution enthusiastically, and fought to rally opposition to the imperialist powers’ blockade of the Soviet Republic.
"On the death of Lenin, she pointed out that the lessons of the Russian Revolution are key to humanity’s future:
“I see the furrow Lenin left sown with the unshatterable seed of a new life for mankind, and cast deep below the rolling tides of storm and lightning, mighty crops for the ages to reap.”
How did that harvest out? It worked out so well, the communists had to build a wall to keep people inside.
Even though many Christian charitable organizations are named after Helen Keller, we have to ask, was Helen Keller a Christian? After you read the following, you decide:
One author writes, "She was an ardent follower of the Universalism of Emanuel Swedenborg, a mystic born in 1688. Swendenborg's view of the atonement was heretical because he taught: "It is a fundamental error on the part of the church to believe that the passion on the cross was the real act of redemption.
"She read the Bible, but accepted and denied its teachings as she saw fit. One of the doctrines that most revolted her was that of Hell. In her book My Religion, Helen says, 'I had been told by narrow people that all who were not Christians would be punished, and naturally my soul revolted, since I knew of wonderful men who had lived and died for truth as they saw it in the pagan lands …' She was a free thinker and based her religious beliefs on her own readings and experiences."
She was a relativist ("I knew of wonderful men who had lived and died for truth as they saw it in pagan lands.") She believed herself to be the arbiter of all truth (she "accepted and denied [the Bible's] teachings as she saw fit.").
Helen Keller's beliefs are in the world's wheel house, so of course the world promotes Helen Keller; she was one of their own and the world loves its own. The world especially likes her idea that "God is the God of all faiths." This sounds like a denial of John 14:6, doesn't it? By that statement, she declared Jesus' claim, "I am the way, the truth and the life," unfit for her universalist sensibilities.
THE MAHATMA
In 1983, world couldn't give enough awards to "Gandhi," the "biographical" (I use the word loosely) movie about Mahatma Gandhi. It won just about every statuette the world had to offer. (I didn't see it; I went to the barber shop to watch them give haircuts.)
Biographical? There were some crucial facets of Gandhi's life the film omitted, as Jonah Goldberg reminds us. Gandhi's first hunger strike against the British was in protest against the English effort to grant greater freedoms and rights to the Untouchables, India's lowest class and most oppressed class. That wouldn't play well with Gandhi's hero status, so Richard Attenborough, the director of the movie, left it out.
Gandhi had no idea of the real world, a fallen world as seen by his dogma of non-violence. During WWII, He called for the British to surrender to the Nazis. He lectured them, "Let the Nazis take possession of your beautiful land with your many beautiful island with your beautiful buildings."
His admonitions to the Jews were so wrong-headed as to laughable, even, dare we say it, crazy, admonitions such as when he told them to commit mass suicide. Could his reasoning have been based on the fact that he considered himself a friend of Hitler and had no use for a Jewish state?
What should the Jews in Germany do? Gandhi's advice was to stand up in peaceful protest against the Nazis, use civil disobedience as the weapon of choice, and thereby commit the mass suicide he advocated. This was a thinker, a moral leader? This is someone with the moral authority to advise the West whose heritage is Christianity? This is someone to whom we should listen? Get real.
Even after the war when people learned of Germany's Final Solution, Gandhi refused to admit that he was wrong. He said that the Jews should have offered themselves to Hitler's knife and should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. This is wisdom? This sounds like a Klansman.
By these pronouncements we see the end result of refusing to accept the first three chapters of the book of Genesis which describe the reality of the Fall of man. Gandhi rejected the fall of man and became naive to the point of being a dangerous fool. Yet he's held up to us of rhe West as a font of wisdom.
The world's heroes? They're the rhinestone cowboys. No thanks. My heroes have always been real cowboys. I'll stick with "Gene and Tex, and Roy, and Rex," and throw in Paladin, Marshall Dillon, and Lash LaRue while you're at it.
___________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, the author of Truthspeak and his new book, The Gospel of Grace and Truth: A Theology of Grace from the Gospel of John," both available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing to Dr. Halsey at michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."
Comments may be addressed to michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net.
If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.
Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM at the above address. You'll be glad you did.
Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:
notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org
Also:
Biblical Ministries, Inc.
C/O Dr. Richard Grubbs
P. O. Box 64582
Lubbock, TX 79464-4582
No, missionaries are vilified in both books and movies. James Michener's "Hawaii" portrays the American missionary Abner Hale as rigid, unlikable and pathetic. If you hated Abner Hale, then the director of the movie succeeded in bringing James Michener's character to the screen.
In the book, "At Play in the Fields of the Lord," the author writes about two planes, "which cast their shadows on an Indian tribe in the Amazon jungle. One plane brings the drunken bush pilots Wolfie and Moon, to be hired by a tinpot jungle general to bomb the Indians. The other brings earnest missionaries from North America, to preach their religion to the tribe. In the author's world, both of these aircraft are machines bearing destruction." (Roger Ebert)
Do they make movies in praise of a believer who endures hardship and perseveres against overwhelming odds and does great deeds, paints great works of art, writes beautiful music, builds hospitals, or discovers vaccines to save millions? You know the answer to that question.
Who are those the world system elevates and applauds? Its own.
HELEN KELLER
Let's take Helen Keller. What schoolboy was not raised on the heroism of Helen Keller who overcame the debilitating effects of such terrible disabilities? Why, the Motion Picture Academy made a film about her life and awarded its leading actresses the coveted Oscar. Before that, the movie was a Broadway play. People loved both the movie and the play.
But, could we be curious for a moment and ask, "Why, of all the people who've overcome severe disabilities, and she did,why did the world choose Helen Keller as the one to chisel onto the Mount Rushmore of our minds? Maybe the following had something to do with it.
WHO WAS HELEN KELLER?
"There is no getting around this, but Helen Keller was a communist or at the very least a hardcore socialist. She spoke out against nuclear bombs, poverty, and capitalism—very actively and very frequently. She published dozens of articles on these matters, and passionately spoke out in public against anything that bothered her morally, politically speaking. So much so that she was on an FBI list of prominent people they needed to keep an eye on." So wrote Larry Knipfing in May, 2012.
She thought the Russian Revolution of 1917, which brought the communists to power was a good thing for Russia and the world. Workers Power, a revolutionary communist organization founded in Britain in 1976 is high on its praise of Helen Keller. In an article dated February 26, 2015, Workers Power said:
"When the First World war came to an end and the workers took power in Russia, Keller backed the revolution enthusiastically, and fought to rally opposition to the imperialist powers’ blockade of the Soviet Republic.
"On the death of Lenin, she pointed out that the lessons of the Russian Revolution are key to humanity’s future:
“I see the furrow Lenin left sown with the unshatterable seed of a new life for mankind, and cast deep below the rolling tides of storm and lightning, mighty crops for the ages to reap.”
How did that harvest out? It worked out so well, the communists had to build a wall to keep people inside.
Even though many Christian charitable organizations are named after Helen Keller, we have to ask, was Helen Keller a Christian? After you read the following, you decide:
One author writes, "She was an ardent follower of the Universalism of Emanuel Swedenborg, a mystic born in 1688. Swendenborg's view of the atonement was heretical because he taught: "It is a fundamental error on the part of the church to believe that the passion on the cross was the real act of redemption.
"She read the Bible, but accepted and denied its teachings as she saw fit. One of the doctrines that most revolted her was that of Hell. In her book My Religion, Helen says, 'I had been told by narrow people that all who were not Christians would be punished, and naturally my soul revolted, since I knew of wonderful men who had lived and died for truth as they saw it in the pagan lands …' She was a free thinker and based her religious beliefs on her own readings and experiences."
She was a relativist ("I knew of wonderful men who had lived and died for truth as they saw it in pagan lands.") She believed herself to be the arbiter of all truth (she "accepted and denied [the Bible's] teachings as she saw fit.").
Helen Keller's beliefs are in the world's wheel house, so of course the world promotes Helen Keller; she was one of their own and the world loves its own. The world especially likes her idea that "God is the God of all faiths." This sounds like a denial of John 14:6, doesn't it? By that statement, she declared Jesus' claim, "I am the way, the truth and the life," unfit for her universalist sensibilities.
THE MAHATMA
In 1983, world couldn't give enough awards to "Gandhi," the "biographical" (I use the word loosely) movie about Mahatma Gandhi. It won just about every statuette the world had to offer. (I didn't see it; I went to the barber shop to watch them give haircuts.)
Biographical? There were some crucial facets of Gandhi's life the film omitted, as Jonah Goldberg reminds us. Gandhi's first hunger strike against the British was in protest against the English effort to grant greater freedoms and rights to the Untouchables, India's lowest class and most oppressed class. That wouldn't play well with Gandhi's hero status, so Richard Attenborough, the director of the movie, left it out.
Gandhi had no idea of the real world, a fallen world as seen by his dogma of non-violence. During WWII, He called for the British to surrender to the Nazis. He lectured them, "Let the Nazis take possession of your beautiful land with your many beautiful island with your beautiful buildings."
His admonitions to the Jews were so wrong-headed as to laughable, even, dare we say it, crazy, admonitions such as when he told them to commit mass suicide. Could his reasoning have been based on the fact that he considered himself a friend of Hitler and had no use for a Jewish state?
What should the Jews in Germany do? Gandhi's advice was to stand up in peaceful protest against the Nazis, use civil disobedience as the weapon of choice, and thereby commit the mass suicide he advocated. This was a thinker, a moral leader? This is someone with the moral authority to advise the West whose heritage is Christianity? This is someone to whom we should listen? Get real.
Even after the war when people learned of Germany's Final Solution, Gandhi refused to admit that he was wrong. He said that the Jews should have offered themselves to Hitler's knife and should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. This is wisdom? This sounds like a Klansman.
By these pronouncements we see the end result of refusing to accept the first three chapters of the book of Genesis which describe the reality of the Fall of man. Gandhi rejected the fall of man and became naive to the point of being a dangerous fool. Yet he's held up to us of rhe West as a font of wisdom.
The world's heroes? They're the rhinestone cowboys. No thanks. My heroes have always been real cowboys. I'll stick with "Gene and Tex, and Roy, and Rex," and throw in Paladin, Marshall Dillon, and Lash LaRue while you're at it.
___________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, the author of Truthspeak and his new book, The Gospel of Grace and Truth: A Theology of Grace from the Gospel of John," both available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing to Dr. Halsey at michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."
Comments may be addressed to michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net.
If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.
Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM at the above address. You'll be glad you did.
Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:
notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org
Also:
Biblical Ministries, Inc.
C/O Dr. Richard Grubbs
P. O. Box 64582
Lubbock, TX 79464-4582
Friday, February 20, 2015
ACID RAIN
During the summers of my high school, college, and seminary years, I put together a string of jobs in which I compiled an underwhelming record. In all but one, no matter the employment, I was inept.
I exaggerated the importance of my first summer job in high school to those who asked, "What are you doing this summer"-- I answered, "I'm helping to feed the nation." (I sacked groceries for customers at a supermarket.)
THE CHICKENS
One high school summer you could find me chopping cotton in the blazing heat, going about that blasted task with the protection of a sweat-soaked straw hat, gloves, and sunscreen. That was also the summer I had the notorious job of vaccinating chickens, one by one, by the hundreds. (I was a success at that filthy task--not one of them got sick on my watch.)
THE BANK
Other jobs in other summers came along--for three college summers, the gods of Citizens National Bank made the mistake of placing me in the printing department, then another summer they give me the mind-numbing task of photocopying musty canceled checks bound in brittle rubber bands that must have been used by the ancient Pharaoh Khufu, 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, in the bank basement, no less, world without end, amen.
THE CEMENT PLANT
But the most miserable job ever in the history of mankind fell came my way during the summer of 1968; that was the summer I went to work for the Portland Cement Company, and thereby hangs a tale.
One day on the job, it happened--the event that had been dreaded by all us drones all summer--the large, ever so huge turning cylinder in which the cement was mixed or manufactured or whatever (I never really understood what its function was) got all clogged up with the cement. They call the wind Moriah and we called the clog, "The Ring," because that's what it was, a ring of cement which had gradually formed, projecting outward from the walls of the cylinder.
The the cylinder ground to a stop, an alarm as loud as the Muslim call to prayer sounded and the managers told us peasants that, after lunch, to report for duty to go into the hell that was the cylinder, and blast that cement ring to kingdom come with jackhammers.
There are no printable words to describe what we were about to enter, so I'll skip much of the story. The heat inside that behemoth was life-threatening if the teams of four stayed inside too long, so a manager timed the stay of each team sent in to blast that thing to bits.
To my horror, standing at the back of the line waiting for the time to enter the cylinder with my team, I saw the managers carry out one member of the first team. He was unconscious and they unceremoniously dumped him into the back of a pick-up, and off the driver went to a local hospital.
Prior to entry into the beast, the management team (mostly made up of sadists who loved to put it to us "college boys") took us to a staging area to get equipped for clear and present danger that was to come. "To get ready" meant to get dressed in heavy suits, hoods, and gloves because, as they warned us, "Acid will be dripping from the top of the cylinder and if that acid gets on your skin, it'll burn its way clear through to the other side of your arm or leg or hand," they cautioned. Arm? Leg? Hand? Those were some of my favorite limbs!
Wonderful. In all that hell-hot heat, we had to wear those heavy suits, hoods, and gloves so the dripping acid wouldn't eat through us. Could the job get any worse? I wondered: if the acid can burn its way through us, why couldn't it burn its way through our suits?
THAT WAS THE DECADE OF ACID
It was in the time of my Portland Cement Company humiliation that it became fashionable to rebel against the foundations of Western Civilization--marriage, family, an absolute morality, the church, and the schools. All over the country, teachers, students, the artists, the intellectual elites of America were releasing acid on those foundations, wanting to tear them apart and establish a new morality, a situational ethic, new definitions, and an anything goes immoral code in its place.
LSD, communes, the San Francisco lifestyle, Haight-Ashbury, flower power, were the rage and all promoted with the slogan invented by one-time West Point cadet, Timothy Leary: "Turn on, tune in, and drop out." It was also at this time that "Don't trust anyone over thirty" became popular. The acid would burn through parental authority with that motto.
It was the decade of violent radicals' occupying administration buildings on campuses across America demanding an end to classical studies of Western Civilization. Their chant was, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ. has got to go." It was the decade of the "Filthy Speech Movement," the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, and Woodstock.
Liberal arts courses changed from emphasizing the classics of Western literature, Latin, American history, and ancient history to emphasizing women's studies and any subjects other than studying the wisdom of "Dead white males." They were politicizing the campuses across America.
THE HARVEST HAS COME
We're reaping the harvest of those days. The acid has done its work: it's burned through and redefined marriage, education, the family, and free speech. It's politicized everything, including funerals. The acid burned through education and changed it to political indoctrination, even at the elementary school level, all the way up through graduate school. (A case in point is English professor Beth Leuck of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater who recently gave extra credit to students who attended an anti-Gov. Scott Walker rally. What the rally had to do with courses in literature is a good question.)
The acid has burned through the family and redefined it, as reflected in the children's book, "Heather Has Two Mommies," published in 1994.
Those who dare to try to neutralize the acid are placed in sensitivity training, humiliated, hounded, shamed, punished, fired, sued (Arlene Stutzman of Washington state was sued and lost and fined $2,000 for each violation of the law because of her refusal to make a floral arrangement for a same-sex marriage. He lawyer said, ""Her home, her business ... her life savings and retirement, these are all in jeopardy ... all because of her deeply held religious views.") At the very least, a person may be harassed until forced to apologize to the nation for their "crimes."
ACID IS AS ACID DOES
When we donned those protective suits to go into the darkness and battle the ring, we did so because, whether we knew anything about chemistry or not, we knew one thing: acid is dangerous. And why is it dangerous? Because it doesn't know when to stop.
That's the way it is with wanting to tear everything down. That's the way it is when you start the acid rain on the foundations of our culture--the acid doesn't know when to quit; it burns up everything. A culture is left with nothing other than moral anarchy and darkness.
LISTEN UP, BOYS AND GIRLS
As the acid burns its way through our culture, so much of that culture resting on the foundation of Christian underpinnings, we've gotten to the point that it's a crime to be gender specific. A city in Nebraska advises its teachers to refrain from saying, "Boys and girls . . ." Teachers may call their young wards, "Readers," "Students," or "Purple penguins." (Yes, really, "Purple penguins.") City University of New York directs its professors not to address the students by "Mr." or "Miss," or Mrs," even though it's obvious that they are either a "Mr.," or a "Miss," or a "Mrs."
Minnesota proposes legislation stating that boys can play on girls' athletic teams and girls can play on boys' teams, if the boy believes himself to be girl and a girl believes herself to be a boy.
On December 1, 2014, Stella Morabito wrote in opposition to the legislation:
"In this scheme, there would be no accounting for sex differences in high school sports on the field or in locker rooms, bathrooms, and hotel rooms. It forbids any camaraderie rooted in the biological reality of one’s sex, or any consideration of the reality of the opposite sex. In fact, to affirm that reality would basically be a crime. So the policy would ultimately abolish girls’ and boys’ sports alike.
She concludes:
"In the end, it’s really all about giving social engineers a license to bully. So Minnesotans have some basic choices to make. Will they support all girls and boys? Or primarily boys who say they are girls and girls who say they are boys? Will they side with special privileges for select groups or universal protection from bullying? They have to choose."
MAY WE ASK?
There are two questions on our minds: "Where does this stop? When is enough, enough?" The answer is obvious: never. Acid never stops because that's the nature of acid. Acid is a bully.
THE WAY OF SIN, THE WAY OF THE FLESH
That's the way the acid of sin is in our lives. It may start small, but if not stopped, it'll bully and burn its way to destroying everything near and dear to the sinner. Just ask the pastor I head about--a prescription drug here, a prescription drug there, and the acid of addiction began to burn through his life. It bullied him until it got its way--it burned through his marriage, his children, his profession, and his house. It didn't stop until it had taken everything, even his friendships.
HOPELESS?
I went into that cylinder, got everything fouled up with my jackhammer, but wonder of wonders, I escaped the acid and lived to tell you the tale of that miserable day. I've never gone back into such a cylinder again.
We're helpless against the acid. We have free will, we don't have to stand under the acid rain or the acid drip of sin. We don't have to let it the acid rain continue. The way to stop the acid is get in and then live in Romans 8: The Holy Spirit, the life of the Spirit (obedience to the Word) crushes and banishes the bully.
I exaggerated the importance of my first summer job in high school to those who asked, "What are you doing this summer"-- I answered, "I'm helping to feed the nation." (I sacked groceries for customers at a supermarket.)
THE CHICKENS
One high school summer you could find me chopping cotton in the blazing heat, going about that blasted task with the protection of a sweat-soaked straw hat, gloves, and sunscreen. That was also the summer I had the notorious job of vaccinating chickens, one by one, by the hundreds. (I was a success at that filthy task--not one of them got sick on my watch.)
THE BANK
Other jobs in other summers came along--for three college summers, the gods of Citizens National Bank made the mistake of placing me in the printing department, then another summer they give me the mind-numbing task of photocopying musty canceled checks bound in brittle rubber bands that must have been used by the ancient Pharaoh Khufu, 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, in the bank basement, no less, world without end, amen.
THE CEMENT PLANT
But the most miserable job ever in the history of mankind fell came my way during the summer of 1968; that was the summer I went to work for the Portland Cement Company, and thereby hangs a tale.
One day on the job, it happened--the event that had been dreaded by all us drones all summer--the large, ever so huge turning cylinder in which the cement was mixed or manufactured or whatever (I never really understood what its function was) got all clogged up with the cement. They call the wind Moriah and we called the clog, "The Ring," because that's what it was, a ring of cement which had gradually formed, projecting outward from the walls of the cylinder.
The the cylinder ground to a stop, an alarm as loud as the Muslim call to prayer sounded and the managers told us peasants that, after lunch, to report for duty to go into the hell that was the cylinder, and blast that cement ring to kingdom come with jackhammers.
There are no printable words to describe what we were about to enter, so I'll skip much of the story. The heat inside that behemoth was life-threatening if the teams of four stayed inside too long, so a manager timed the stay of each team sent in to blast that thing to bits.
To my horror, standing at the back of the line waiting for the time to enter the cylinder with my team, I saw the managers carry out one member of the first team. He was unconscious and they unceremoniously dumped him into the back of a pick-up, and off the driver went to a local hospital.
Prior to entry into the beast, the management team (mostly made up of sadists who loved to put it to us "college boys") took us to a staging area to get equipped for clear and present danger that was to come. "To get ready" meant to get dressed in heavy suits, hoods, and gloves because, as they warned us, "Acid will be dripping from the top of the cylinder and if that acid gets on your skin, it'll burn its way clear through to the other side of your arm or leg or hand," they cautioned. Arm? Leg? Hand? Those were some of my favorite limbs!
Wonderful. In all that hell-hot heat, we had to wear those heavy suits, hoods, and gloves so the dripping acid wouldn't eat through us. Could the job get any worse? I wondered: if the acid can burn its way through us, why couldn't it burn its way through our suits?
THAT WAS THE DECADE OF ACID
It was in the time of my Portland Cement Company humiliation that it became fashionable to rebel against the foundations of Western Civilization--marriage, family, an absolute morality, the church, and the schools. All over the country, teachers, students, the artists, the intellectual elites of America were releasing acid on those foundations, wanting to tear them apart and establish a new morality, a situational ethic, new definitions, and an anything goes immoral code in its place.
LSD, communes, the San Francisco lifestyle, Haight-Ashbury, flower power, were the rage and all promoted with the slogan invented by one-time West Point cadet, Timothy Leary: "Turn on, tune in, and drop out." It was also at this time that "Don't trust anyone over thirty" became popular. The acid would burn through parental authority with that motto.
It was the decade of violent radicals' occupying administration buildings on campuses across America demanding an end to classical studies of Western Civilization. Their chant was, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ. has got to go." It was the decade of the "Filthy Speech Movement," the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, and Woodstock.
Liberal arts courses changed from emphasizing the classics of Western literature, Latin, American history, and ancient history to emphasizing women's studies and any subjects other than studying the wisdom of "Dead white males." They were politicizing the campuses across America.
THE HARVEST HAS COME
We're reaping the harvest of those days. The acid has done its work: it's burned through and redefined marriage, education, the family, and free speech. It's politicized everything, including funerals. The acid burned through education and changed it to political indoctrination, even at the elementary school level, all the way up through graduate school. (A case in point is English professor Beth Leuck of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater who recently gave extra credit to students who attended an anti-Gov. Scott Walker rally. What the rally had to do with courses in literature is a good question.)
The acid has burned through the family and redefined it, as reflected in the children's book, "Heather Has Two Mommies," published in 1994.
Those who dare to try to neutralize the acid are placed in sensitivity training, humiliated, hounded, shamed, punished, fired, sued (Arlene Stutzman of Washington state was sued and lost and fined $2,000 for each violation of the law because of her refusal to make a floral arrangement for a same-sex marriage. He lawyer said, ""Her home, her business ... her life savings and retirement, these are all in jeopardy ... all because of her deeply held religious views.") At the very least, a person may be harassed until forced to apologize to the nation for their "crimes."
ACID IS AS ACID DOES
When we donned those protective suits to go into the darkness and battle the ring, we did so because, whether we knew anything about chemistry or not, we knew one thing: acid is dangerous. And why is it dangerous? Because it doesn't know when to stop.
That's the way it is with wanting to tear everything down. That's the way it is when you start the acid rain on the foundations of our culture--the acid doesn't know when to quit; it burns up everything. A culture is left with nothing other than moral anarchy and darkness.
LISTEN UP, BOYS AND GIRLS
As the acid burns its way through our culture, so much of that culture resting on the foundation of Christian underpinnings, we've gotten to the point that it's a crime to be gender specific. A city in Nebraska advises its teachers to refrain from saying, "Boys and girls . . ." Teachers may call their young wards, "Readers," "Students," or "Purple penguins." (Yes, really, "Purple penguins.") City University of New York directs its professors not to address the students by "Mr." or "Miss," or Mrs," even though it's obvious that they are either a "Mr.," or a "Miss," or a "Mrs."
Minnesota proposes legislation stating that boys can play on girls' athletic teams and girls can play on boys' teams, if the boy believes himself to be girl and a girl believes herself to be a boy.
On December 1, 2014, Stella Morabito wrote in opposition to the legislation:
"In this scheme, there would be no accounting for sex differences in high school sports on the field or in locker rooms, bathrooms, and hotel rooms. It forbids any camaraderie rooted in the biological reality of one’s sex, or any consideration of the reality of the opposite sex. In fact, to affirm that reality would basically be a crime. So the policy would ultimately abolish girls’ and boys’ sports alike.
She concludes:
"In the end, it’s really all about giving social engineers a license to bully. So Minnesotans have some basic choices to make. Will they support all girls and boys? Or primarily boys who say they are girls and girls who say they are boys? Will they side with special privileges for select groups or universal protection from bullying? They have to choose."
MAY WE ASK?
There are two questions on our minds: "Where does this stop? When is enough, enough?" The answer is obvious: never. Acid never stops because that's the nature of acid. Acid is a bully.
THE WAY OF SIN, THE WAY OF THE FLESH
That's the way the acid of sin is in our lives. It may start small, but if not stopped, it'll bully and burn its way to destroying everything near and dear to the sinner. Just ask the pastor I head about--a prescription drug here, a prescription drug there, and the acid of addiction began to burn through his life. It bullied him until it got its way--it burned through his marriage, his children, his profession, and his house. It didn't stop until it had taken everything, even his friendships.
HOPELESS?
I went into that cylinder, got everything fouled up with my jackhammer, but wonder of wonders, I escaped the acid and lived to tell you the tale of that miserable day. I've never gone back into such a cylinder again.
We're helpless against the acid. We have free will, we don't have to stand under the acid rain or the acid drip of sin. We don't have to let it the acid rain continue. The way to stop the acid is get in and then live in Romans 8: The Holy Spirit, the life of the Spirit (obedience to the Word) crushes and banishes the bully.
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